I got this book because it seemed like a cool edition of The Foundation Trilogy. I later discovered that it glows in the dark when I turned the lights off to go to sleep.
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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Sounds like you're kinda more after something a little less hard? Asimov is very much the quintessential "this could've been an essay" hard sci-fi author (though I will say, imo The Mule is a great character)...but then again I'd argue most hard hard sci-fi is like that. It's either an ethics or a speculative engineering/biology essay under the veneer of a story. It doesn't matter much in a short story because you don't have to set up anything beyond your core theme but stretching out into something more than 50 pages long can be a bit much for some people.
If you're after something longform from him that's not so...jargony, have you tried Caves of Steel? it's his attempt at writing genre fiction and at least I think it's pretty good. It's a murder mystery set in his general universe (though way before the Empire and everything) and tries to tackle the more social aspects and themes behind robotics.
I loved all of Asimov's books/stories, I've recommended to a number of friends but a few have had the same issues with the foundation books as above.
I thought the scale/short-story history jumping style of the foundation books was a really unique approach to storytelling. I thoroughly enjoyed the series.